The Blanket
by willywonka3435
Summary: Sometimes when it seems there's nowhere in the world you belong, all it takes is a reminder of what home really is to start things looking up again. HouseWilson friendship, no slash.


_Well, I have now officially retired myself from writing fanfiction so I can get back to creating my own characters and settings and crap, but here's an older piece. As in, extremely old. There is, as usual, no slash intended. If House and Wilson are a bit OOC, that's probably because this was about my second piece. Heh. XD_

_I have two more old pieces to post, one classic, unrealistic oh-no-Chase-breakdown and my first, which is basically the balcony scene after Stacy brings Mark to House where House gives her a hug and she cries and etc. It's a House/Stacy one and I took every single line of dialogue directly from canon. Feh. I hope you enjoy them._

_And man, I don't like giving up trying to write Wilson. He is the best ever, even if I do butcher his character. O.o_

**The Blanket**

**W**ho the hell would be knocking on his door at this hour, House wondered, sitting up, whacking his bad leg on the floor and viciously cursing the world in general. It was at least one in the morning, he'd _just _fallen asleep—it wasn't like that was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, after all—and now someone was pounding loud enough it sounded like the world was gonna end. And somehow he suspected ignoring them just wouldn't work this time. So, rolling his eyes, he popped a pill, grabbed his cane, and limped as fast as his bum leg would let him out to the front room. He opened the door, ready to bash somebody's face in, and discovered Wilson standing soaked and shivering on his front porch. In a tie. He put the cane down, but he didn't stop rolling his eyes.

"Well, I knew you obsessed about them, but don't you think sleeping in one is just a bit over the top?" He didn't ask why Wilson was outside his door. He already knew.

Wilson sighed, and House realized he didn't look like his usual self. His hair was plastered to his forehead, the tie in question was drenched, and his eyes were wet. He'd obviously been crying. House didn't want to deal with that, so he stepped aside and silently let Wilson in.

"You know, if a fellow's going to show up on my doorstep at"—he made a dramatic gesture of checking his watch—"approximately one-oh-seven and thirty-two seconds in the morning, he ought to at least bring some kind of chow. I haven't eaten in fifteen minutes now, and the ol' tummy's starting to sound like the Philharmonic. If it were a little less, well, harmonic."

"Sorry."

House blinked.

He limped over to his hall closet, yanked open the door, and tugged and pulled until he had the blanket he always privately kept for Wilson in one hand and every single other scrap of linen he owned in a heap on the floor.

"It _is_ late and you _are_ wet, but I assume you remember where the couch is?"

Wilson nodded dejectedly and took a step over the threshold, where he proceeded to drip all over House's entryway and Nikes.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a _minute_! You can drip on the floor all you want, but the shoes are off-limits, buddy!" House jabbed at Wilson's foot with his cane until the other man took another step and moved away from the precious footwear. Then House threw the blanket at him. Wilson lifted it to his face and breathed in.

"You haven't washed it, have you?"

"What? And wreck the medley of scents, the beautiful bouquet that is Jimmy Wilson, Boy Wonder Oncologist? My dear man, you must be _mad_!"

Wilson sighed and made a feeble attempt at a grin. "I don't want you to wash it."

Wilson didn't say what he was thinking, which was something along the lines of _this is the only thing I have that smells like me, that makes me feel like I belong_; he didn't say it because he knew House was armed and dangerous and might very well clobber him.

House smirked and did a much better job of it. "Lucky for you I still have some grub of my own left. Feel free to nuke some. I'm hitting the sack."

Wilson took a few more steps into House's family room and gazed at the familiarity, the piano in the corner, the bookshelves, the coffee table—he savored the delicious mixture of scents that was pine and man. The blanket was soft in his hands. The room was warm. He'd been standing in the rain for far too long.

"Thanks," he said hoarsely, and then cleared his throat and began again. "Thanks—for this."

"What, for the food? Don't thank me till you've tried it. I don't guarantee it won't kill you," House said, because it was now—he checked his watch—one-fifteen and eighteen seconds, and he _really _didn't want to deal with this. "Dry yourself off before you sit down, will you? Last time I had to clean the stupid thing for three days before I could get all the water out of it."

Wilson remembered the last time he'd done this, which hadn't actually been all that long ago. That was when House had extended his open-ended invitation—well, not in so many words, but Wilson knew what he meant. He held the blanket close and walked over to the couch in question. It was his couch. They both knew that.

"Sorry. About coming so late."

"Late? You call this late? Normally I go to bed at least three hours later than this."

Wilson grinned. He knew for a fact that he'd woken House up, and House got little enough sleep as it was. "You _did _say the door was always open…"

"Except when it's closed."

"Right; bros—"

"Before hos, man. But only if you bring Chinese."

"You know, I really don't think anybody's open at this hour."

"Probably right. So how does this sound? Next time, you're buying."

"Only as long as you don't order half the menu again."

"But that's what makes it so much _fun_!"

Wilson rolled his eyes and House retrieved a towel from the floor and tossed that at him as well. "One drop of water on this couch—just _one_, mind you—and no sweet-and-sour pork for you tomorrow."

"I'm paying."

"Okay, no sweet-and-sour pork for you on Wednesday."

"I'm paying then too."

House growled. "Looks like I'm going to have to steal your wallet again." Then he checked his watch. "Okay. Now I'm _really_ going to bed. You be good," he said, grinning, "or I'll sic Cameron on you in the morning. And you know how she can be when she switches into her little protect-everybody-oh-aren't-I-sweet mode."

Wilson grinned back. "You've scared me. I'll go to sleep."

House limped off down the hallway again. Wilson stood in the middle of the living room listening to the sound of his footsteps for a minute until the door closed. He sat down, removed his shoes, rubbed his head with the towel, swung his legs onto the arm rest, and closed his eyes, inhaling the scent, the mixture of cologne, Scotch, and oddly annoying comfort that was House.

He was home.

_fin_


End file.
